


Riptide

by Cryptographic_Delurk



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Amorality, Economic & Relational Instability, F/F, Femslash February, Post-Dragon Age II Quest - The Last Straw, Power Imbalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:55:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29853567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptographic_Delurk/pseuds/Cryptographic_Delurk
Summary: Realistically Anders, and Isabela herself, had to follow suit and leave the crumbling city. One had to break out of the Keep’s dungeons, and one had to climb aboard a ship and sail to the horizon.But Anders was still in his cell, and Isabela was still stranded ashore - divvying her time between the Hanged Man and Aveline’s far too quaint home with the welcome mat and table set for dinner parties. And everything about that was wrong.
Relationships: Isabela/Aveline Vallen
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	Riptide

**Author's Note:**

> BGM: Vance Joy’s _[Riptide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYoWuaw5nSk)_  
>  and Jasmine Thompson’s [cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYYbnuaRzbE).

One of the first things Aveline did after arresting Anders was cut her hair.

They had slept first. In the same bed even, they had both been so tired. ( _How embarrassing_ , Isabela thought. _Sleeping together, and not just rutting._ ) But when Aveline had woken in the morning and prepared to return to the Keep, she’d apparently looked in the dressing mirror and thought to shave her hair less than an inch off her scalp.

Isabela was yawning, sitting on the left side of the bed and pulling her boots over her thighs, when Aveline walked in - hair all gone. Isabela had laughed at her.

She hadn’t been planning to walk Aveline to her work at the Keep, but making fun of Aveline’s haircut seemed worth the risk of being called out for doing something passably _domestic._ So Isabela followed her and poked at the bared nape of her neck. And when Aveline called her a hussy she invented reasons to bend down and shove her arse in the faces and delicate sensibilities of as many Hightown residents as possible.

It was normal enough, until they’d come to the square at Viscount’s Way and the heap of rubble that used to be the Chantry, all cordoned off. The Keep had sustained damage in the explosion as well, though only of a superficial nature. It seemed the interior was structurally sound enough that there was no reason for the Guard to relocate.

Isabela had said something utterly pedestrian:

“That hair and that face, and if you let out one of your war cries… The Arishok himself would feel emasculated standing next to you.”

“That’s the idea. There’s been enough insubordination from my men already. If they won’t respect me they can at least be intimidated by me.”

“Oh, poor little Aveline,” Isabela cooed, and gestured in a way that made it clear she meant the little Aveline that was the pearl between her legs. “She won’t ever catch herself a man that way.”

Aveline turned on her heel, right in front of the Keep. “And what do I need a man for?” she scoffed. “I already have you.”

She didn’t even have an insult for Isabela. Which was no fun, and also a little alarming.

Aveline went very red in her freckled face. She let out a huff of frustration – one that, surprisingly, did not seem directed at Isabela. “I didn’t say that right. I know you have problems with… being _had_ … I didn’t mean like a possession,” she clarified.

This was, if anything, even more alarming, and Isabela did not know what to say to it. The crisp morning suddenly seemed very cold, and Isabela ran her hands over her bare arms.

Aveline gave a curt warning that Isabela had better not get into trouble while she was attending to her work in the Guard, and shuffled into the Keep before Isabela could respond.

Really, Aveline was far more likely to get into trouble than her, Isabela thought. And that was exactly what Aveline did. She marched into her office and made moves to fire half the guard – all who disobeyed her order and refused to mobilise in her defence during the crisis at the Gallows a day and a half ago. This apparently went against the rules for lawful termination of post as outlined in the Guard’s employment contract. Aveline said that if they didn’t believe in lawlessness, perhaps they should not have participated in it two days ago.

 _Ever the hypocrite_ , Isabela thought. But although it should have been wildly funny that Aveline was finding ways to unlawfully punish the unlawful insubordination of the Guard when she demanded they do unlawful activities like participate in a mage rebellion, Isabela did not find it particularly amusing. It was only another way that everything was changing.

==

“Just to be clear Anders,” Aveline had asserted sternly, “When this is over, you will turn yourself in for your crime.”

“You’re not off the hook just because I didn’t kill you,” Hawke had said, grinding her hands against the splintered wood of her staff. “I’m not the Viscount. I’m not even sure I can rightly be called a Champion anymore. You took that authority from me. So you don’t get to make me your jury, judge, and executioner just because that’s what you or your damned spirit have convinced yourselves is fair.”

Anders had been recalcitrant at first, but he became more capitulatory under the combined rejections of Hawke, Varric, and what seemed like just about every mage he had endeavoured to save.

 _Wasn’t_ _that just the way?_ Isabela thought, for she had still been amused at the time. _He went out of his way to do the right thing – to help people who hadn’t been able to help themselves – and they_ _’_ _d repaid him with resentment and scorn._ And he hadn’t believed her when she said there was no justice in the world.

Isabela knew better than to think he’d learned anything from the experience – he was too pig-headed for that – but it tickled her anyhow that the world had basically tripped over itself proving her correct.

Anders had given himself up pretty quietly after that. Aveline had tied his hands and led him to the dungeons deep under the Keep and Isabela hadn’t seen him since. She’d found that funny too, at the time. This bizarre fit of lawfulness in a lawless world – carrying out these meaningless actions like scenes from a stage play. The entirety of the Templar Order hadn’t been capable of containing Anders. And that was before he’d gone all glowy. It was only a matter of time before Anders took a bow and exited stage left.

Hawke was the first to go, because she had all the mages of the Gallows to figure out what to do with and very little time to get a head start on their escape. She’d kissed Isabela on the cheek and wished her good fortune in a way that struck Isabela as put upon and brusque.

Fenris had been next. Isabela was surprised when he showed up at the Hanged Man with a packed bag and bottle of wine and told her to drink something decent for once in her life.

“That’s uncharacteristically idealistic of you,” she told him, when he said he’d be travelling north to intercept a shipment of slaves to Tevinter. “What happened to all your moaning: _That’_ _s_ _easy for all of you to say_ ,” she mocked his scowling. “ _Whatever I do_ _–_ _it would change nothing._ ”

Fenris shrugged and leaned into her shoulder. “Everyone else is being an idealistic fool. Mages running wild. The city in disarray. People shouting in the streets about holy crusades or the inherent rights of man… I thought I would try it out for myself.” He sounded remarkably cheerful. “Perhaps it is my prerogative as a free man.”

There were a lot of things that Isabela had never told Fenris. She had never told him that that group of would-be slaves she let free on the Antivan coastline was not the first shipment of people she had trafficked. She had imagined what Fenris would say if she ever told him – the long silent drink he’d take before admitting he’d seen to killing as many slaves as she had. And then her frustrating and futile attempts to convince him it wasn’t the same, and that she hadn’t been a slave herself when she’d made those choices.

This Fenris seemed different though. She wondered: if she confessed now, would he actually have the wherewithal to condemn her?

In the end she let him have his happy farewell, and let herself have her lies of omission.

Something similar happened with Merrill.

Merrill walked her into the back room of her hovel, and the mirror shone and there was Isabela, reflected in its smooth surface.

“Oh,” Isabela said. As long as she had known Merrill, Merrill had presided over a collection of broken shards and cracked skin. It seemed wrong to see her reflected so complete and whole – larger than Isabela in the mirror for a trick of light and perspective.

“I can’t stay,” Merrill said, turning to face Isabela and biting her lip. “I can’t stay with the March maybe coming, and all the templars ready to- And so many humans that know about it being here. I’ve been too careless.”

“Where are you going to go?” Isabela asked.

“Oh, through the Vimmarks,” Merrill said airily.

“Kitten,” Isabela scolded. There was no way to leave Kirkwall by land that did not lead through the Vimmarks.

“Do you like the mountains, Isabela?” Merrill picked at her nails. “I know you like the sea. Of course you like the sea.” She began to speak faster, and all the spaces between her words ran together. “When I was very little, I met a Dalish clan at Arlathvhen who claimed the existence of two Evanuri I’d never heard any other clan claim. One presided over the sea, and the other over the mountains, and though they loved one another they could not bring themselves to be together because neither could stand to be apart from their domains. But I thought that was very silly,” Merrill confessed. “Is it impossible to like both mountains and sea at the same time?”

“You won’t tell me where you’re going? Or what you’ll be doing? You don’t trust me?” Isabela pouted. She swung her hips and sashayed up to Merrill. “We both know I have ways of getting the information out of you, Kitten.”

Merrill went very red, as Isabela ran a finger under her chin. “Ooh, okay,” she broke prematurely. “But you can’t tell Varric, okay? He tells far too many stories. And you can’t tell Aveline. Or anyone else, please, Isabela.”

Isabela chuckled. “I don’t think you can keep Varric from knowing anything once he’s made his mind to know, Kitten.”

A look halfway between sceptical and guilty flitted across Merrill’s face, but she declined to comment.

Isabela said she wouldn’t tell anyone, and then Merrill told her.

“Oh,” Isabela said again. It hadn’t been what she expected. Not something small and harmless, the way she often thought of Merrill. “You… probably shouldn’t have told me that,” she admitted.

“No,” Merrill agreed. She looked down at the floor, and after a moment of picking at a floor splinter with her toe, she unhooked the knife from her belt and pressed the blade over her left ring finger, not yet hard enough to pierce the skin. “Would you mind terribly?” she asked Isabela.

After a moment, Isabela said she wouldn’t.

Merrill nodded and tightened her grip on the knife, and Isabela lost the next few seconds. When she blinked, the blood had evaporated off Merrill’s finger, along with the memory.

They shuffled awkwardly in the narrow corridor that Merrill called a room.

“I am glad you were willing to tell me,” Isabela finally said. “Even if it was better forgotten in the end.”

Merrill beamed.

“How soon are you leaving?” Isabela asked. “Will you still be here tomorrow?”

“Oh, yes,” Merrill agreed. “It’s not so simple as just packing what I can carry because, oh~” She gestured vaguely at the Eluvian. “And I don’t have a halla like we did when we walked across Ferelden, so I had to make other arrangements. I’ll be here two days still, if you want to come by for anything.”

There were a lot of things that Isabela hadn’t told Merrill either. And there were all sorts of things she hadn’t gotten around to showing her – card tricks and body shots and how to flirt properly. But two days was not very much time. And, although Isabela didn’t know where Merrill was going or what she’d be doing, she was impressed with the idea that it was large and dangerous and Merrill would be needing something more tangible than party tricks to help her.

Isabela had given most of her money to Aveline for the blasted ship, and Hawke was decidedly not there to pester for a job. So, in spite of the fact that the work of a simple pickpocket was terribly déclassé, Isabela took to the Hightown Market. The Guard presence was nearly doubled, despite the fact that they were short on hands. And the nobles were clutching their purses tightly to their chests and looking suspiciously over their shoulders as they carried out their transactions, particularly jumpy after the recent political unrest. With the notable exception of the Chantry, Hightown had managed to escape relatively unharmed in the recent mage-templar confrontation, where Lowtown and the Docks had been ravaged. And that meant, presiding in the heights over an increasingly angry and desperate populace, the nobles of Hightown were keenly aware they still had a lot to lose.

Isabela made sure they lost at least some of it, either to spite or in spite of their pathological paranoia. And she returned to Merrill’s hovel and tossed some hundred and fifty odd sovereigns to her.

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” Merrill simpered, as she unravelled the cloth purse. “I haven’t done much of anything to deserve… you.”

“Come off it, Kitten,” Isabela said. “We both know you’re terrible with money. Keep it, please – a little nest egg you can use as a bribe in an emergency.” She wrinkled her nose, and affected a haughtiness she didn’t feel. “Just don’t tell anyone I was the one that gave it to you. I don’t need anyone thinking I’m passing out handouts to everyone on the street.”

Merrill bit her lip, and tucked the purse into her belt. She blinked something out of her eyes, and then looked up at Isabela. “Where did you get it? Oh! Was it a mugging?” she said excitedly. “Did you mug someone for it?”

Isabela dutifully made up a story about a mugging. In the story, Isabela’s target was a villainous count, one who bullied his servants and skinned cats on the weekends, and whose comeuppance had come as a direct result of the chain of events that started with Isabela’s mugging. It effectively made her own crime victimless – perhaps even just. It was much more exciting and violent than the actual pickpocketing, and Merrill bounced effervescently in her seat as Isabela regaled the tale.

Merrill quieted again, after the story was over. And then rushed out an apology and excuse all at once. “I’m sorry, you’ve done so much for me. And I’ve hardly done anything for you at all. And I wish I could do something back for you, so you know how much I love you, but I don’t think I can. But I think you’ll be alright anyhow, even without me. Aveline promised me she’d look after you, anyway.”

“I hardly need Big Girl to be my caretaker,” Isabela huffed, affronted.

“Oh, it wasn’t only you,” Merrill rushed to reassure. “It’s just that’s what Aveline does - or at least says she’d like to do – protect people, right? And so she promised me she’d take care of you, and Varric.” Merrill gave a wry, pained smile and tapped her nails against her breakfast table. “And Anders. She said she’d _take care_ of Anders.”

Merrill’s grasp of the common tongue and its ugly double meanings really had improved a lot in the last seven years. Isabela could still remember the time when all the vileness of the world and their little group’s spitting words seemed to fly far over Merrill’s head. And now that time was far gone.

Merrill left the city the next day, as she had planned.

Varric wasn’t about to go anywhere, but Isabela saw less of him, occupied as he was by Guild meetings and the rumours that he stood a decent shot of being voted the city’s next Viscount. And, really, Isabela wasn’t sure there was much holding them together with the others gone. Varric was too much like her on the surface and too little like her at the core, and they had always worked together best when crowding other people, rather than with one-on-one with each other.

But, no, Varric was not leaving. Same as Aveline.

Realistically, it should have been Anders, or Isabela herself, who fled the crumbling city next. One had to break out of the Keep’s dungeons, and one had to climb aboard a ship and sail to the horizon. It was really the only way things could have gone.

But a week had passed since Merrill left, and neither of those things had happened. Anders was still in his cell, and Isabela was still stranded ashore – divvying her time between the Hanged Man and Aveline’s far too quaint home with the welcome mat and the table set for dinner parties. And everything about that was wrong.

==

Isabela knew the layout of the Keep by heart. Every door and window, which rooms were stacked upon which other rooms in the floor plan. And there was no room she was better acquainted with than the Guard Captian’s Office. She had at times broken in through the bay windows at the front of the office, shimmied through the double hung window at the side, and on one memorable occasion dropped down from the Viscount’s administrative offices through a hole left in the ceiling after the Qunari attack.

The benefits of using alternate entrances to the Guard Captain’s office were thus: when nobody in the Guard barracks saw you make your entrance, it was impossible for them to tell how much of the Guard Captain’s afternoon you had wasted by the time you sauntered out the door with your neck ravished and hair mussed. And Isabela had whittled away hours of their lives – humming sea shanties, sharing friend-fiction excerpts, trading quips or wheedling information about whatever free enterprise Aveline planned to oppress next – all with her rump planted firmly on the desk atop Aveline’s paperwork.

It was, in Isabela’s estimation, time well spent.

Isabela had been intending for one such afternoon, and was now sitting on the window ledge waiting for a chance to enter. She watched Seneschal Bran through the lattice and caught words like Gallows, back taxes, civil disobedience, Serah Tethras, and _I know it is not your home, but you will not damn this city, Guard Captain._ He was boring and entirely too chatty and it took way too long for him to leave.

Once he was gone, Isabela watched as Aveline twisted her finger around the tweed she’d used to string the key to her wrist. She grit her teeth and tugged angrily at her headband, and then picked up a glass figurine of an angel placed at the side of her desk. For a moment, Isabela thought she might throw it at the wall, but she only squeezed it in her fist, before setting it back down.

Isabela thought this was a good time to interrupt. “Yoohoo!” she whistled, as she pressed the window pane open and slipped inside. “I brought snacks!”

Aveline did not seem surprised to see her.

“Well, really just the one snack,” Isabela said. She tapped the toe of her boot on the rug and put her hands on her hips.

Aveline sighed, which was not at all the reaction to this statement Isabela wanted.

“It’s me,” Isabela admitted. “I’m the snack.”

“I know you think you’re the snack, Isabela.” Aveline had collapsed her head into her hands and was rubbing circles into her temples.

“Well, you’re always calling me a tart so you obviously think so too, griffon lips~” She scooted up to Aveline’s desk and sat atop it, facing away so Aveline had a nice view of her backside.

“Not now, Isabela,” Aveline sighed. “We can talk later, when I don’t have shifts to reassign and don’t have to beg my men for even more of their time.”

“Ooh, don’t be like that,” Isabela reached across the desk and picked up the glass angel. She cradled it in her hand with delicate fingers – the Angel of Fortitude. “I’m sure you could go for a slice of tart, or at least a little banter with one.”

“Instances of violent crime have shot up nearly five hundred percent. We’re preparing for riots. Apostates are running rampant, and it’s apparently my job to pick up the slack now that the templars have fallen to pieces. And that’s not even counting-” Aveline tugged angrily at the tweed string on her wrist. “I’m under a lot of stress. We can talk later at home.”

“At your home, you mean,” Isabela huffed. “And what will you do if you get home and I’m not there.”

“Then I’ll know you’re out getting dicked by some nameless drunk at the Hanged Man, and we’ll talk some other time!” Aveline snapped.

“You know,” Isabela wiggled her hips. “If the problem is you’re stressed, I wouldn’t mind if you redirected some of that and took it out on me~” She bit her lip and looked coyly over her shoulder back at Aveline.

Aveline looked absolutely furious. “We’ll. Talk. Later!”

Isabela set the Angel of Fortitude back down and huffed as she flounced off the desk. “Fine. If you’re going to be an absolute cunt, maybe I _will_ go find someone else. You can work yourself out of that little tizzy you’ve spun yourself into.”

Isabela said this to save face, because in the end she listened when Aveline commanded her to leave. Isabela wasn’t sure what that said about her, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t anything good.

She strutted out the door to Aveline’s office, slamming the door behind her. And she had only just hiked her boots and decided to head to Aveline’s place to break something, when one of the Guard turned the corner and walked near direct into her.

“Oh, it’s the Captain’s girl,” he said appraisingly.

Isabela recognised him too – Guardsman Donnic – the one that Aveline had had that terrible crush on a few years back.

“Girl? Don’t know a _woman_ when you see one.” Isabela stood up straight and swayed her hips. She didn’t even come up to Donnic’s shoulder. “And I’m not anyone’s,” she challenged.

“No,” Donnic laughed. “I suppose if anything she’s yours.”

Isabela huffed. That was hardly better.

“You weren’t in there long today,” he pointed out. “In the Captain’s office.”

There was really something off-putting about Guardsman Donnic, Isabela thought, and it wasn’t just the sideburns. Because Isabela had told Aveline, a few months after Hawke had thrown in the towel on the issue, that it wasn’t too late and there was no reason not to just come onto the man, and Aveline hadn’t budged. Isabela could never pin it down, but there was something about him that made the most stubborn and aggravating woman in Thedas give up.

Also he was a member of the Guard, and a do-gooder, and Isabela really shouldn’t like him.

But Isabela did like him. She’d run into him at the Blooming Rose one night, and they’d had a nice chat and he’d taken her advice about which girl to hire. And she’d told Fenris about it, who relayed back a story about how Guardsman Donnic had caught him sneaking out of his mansion. He’d issued a warning about elves not being allowed to carry weapons in the city in a way that made it as clear as possible he never intended to enforce it. Fenris told the entire story glancing shyly at his own feet, before Isabela called him out for being nearly as smitten as Aveline.

So Isabela shouldn’t have liked Guardsman Donnic and shouldn’t have told him anything but-

“She was in an awful little snit about Seneschal what’s-his-face coming to visit,” Isabela harrumphed. “I’ve half a mind to shove her off a pier at the docks. Cold water might snap her out of it… Or at least make _me_ feel a smidge better,” she smiled privately to herself.

Donnic seemed unsure of what to say to this, but after a moment he waved Isabela towards the entrance of the barracks. “I still have another fifteen before the start of my shift. Let me get you some coffee from the breakroom.”

They leaned against the railing over the main hall of the Keep, watching as angry petitioners filled the hall leading to the Viscount’s chamber. Isabela poured from her flask of rum to dilute the too-strong coffee Donnic had brought for them. And she found the things they talked about not as terribly boring as they rightly should have been.

In fact, it was a little nice to have a chance to voice and confirm all the things she already suspected.

“The Captain can’t just fire all the guards she’s talking about,” Donnic said. “We’ve been understaffed since Jevan’s rally in Darktown, which is in violation of our contract with the Keep. There aren’t even enough of us to cover the normal shifts in Lowtown.”

“Oh, but we do miss you all,” Isabela cooed sarcastically. And then, before Donnic had the chance to make sense of that- “And with the templars either dead or hurrying to cover their bums, there’s no military force to hold the city.”

“They’re sending more in from Ostwick.”

“And they’ll be rushing to side with Kirkwall against Starkhaven, I’m sure.” Isabela wrung her lips into a thin line against her coffee cup.

“That’s the problem isn’t it?” Donnic smacked his lips. “Hopefully it won’t come to that. You and the Champion and the Captain’s other friends – you all knew him, the apostate, Anders, right?”

“That’s one way to put it,” Isabela said. The wrong way to put it. ‘Friends’ did not quite capture it.

“Do you think she can hold him?” Donnic asked. “She won’t let any of us down to the cell to see him.”

Aveline kept the only key on her, tied to her wrist, at all times.

“I-? Do I think-?” Isabela bit her lip. Had it been only a week ago, Isabela would have said, no, there was no way Aveline could hold Anders. But times had changed. “I don’t know.”

“Is that Prince fellow really going to lay siege to the whole city just for one man’s blood?” Donnic asked. “I thought he seemed more reasonable than that.”

“He’s certainly proven to have a taste for vengeance… for Vengeance,” Isabela snickered to herself. “But, no. I can’t say I know all the details, but I’m relatively sure Varric also managed to get on his bad side. And all the rest of us by the end of it.”

It was too bad about Sebastian, Isabela thought. She had liked Sebastian, when he wasn’t being too terribly boring. But – same as Donnic had misjudged – Sebastian had never really _gotten_ it, had he? They were not ‘friends’ in Hawke’s group. They were not a rogue band of do-gooders, or a Wicked Grace circle that slew bandits on the weekends. They were the only people in the world for one another, for people who had lost all and everyone else and for whom there could be no loyalty higher. It was not a place for people like Sebastian, who had Grand Clerics to be getting all righteous and offended and murdery over. It was no wonder Hawke had kicked him out from the group first.

“So you don’t think he’ll disband the army he’s raising, even if Aveline submits the apostate to him for trial?”

“Who knows?” Isabela mused. “Does it matter? Big Girl’s as stubborn as an ox. It doesn’t matter how hopeless the battle or how few allies stand at her side. So long as there’s someone standing behind her to protect, she’ll hold position with that sword and shield until her very last breath.”

Isabela knew this because she’d been that person standing behind Aveline more than once.

“It matters to those of us who don’t want to throw ourselves to the void with her,” Donnic sighed. “I don’t think the Captain is well suited to rally the numbers she needs. And I’d be surprised if she doesn’t lose more men with the way the guard has fractured. Lieutenant Harley adores her, and even she’s been driven to tears from the overwork.” He paused. “These aren’t my words but… I don’t _not_ understand where the men are coming from when they say a Ferelden-born Orlesian woman was perhaps not the best choice for Kirkwall’s Guard Captain. It has caused divisiveness where we needed unity.”

 _And that was Aveline’s fault? That the guard was filled with nationalists?_ Isabela snorted. But she knew that wasn’t really what Guardsman Donnic was saying. “I’m half convinced the last Viscount assigned our red-haired rookie Captain in order to destabilise the guard to begin with. It’s a surprise Big Girl’s lasted this long.”

“You’re under no delusions then,” Donnic grimaced.

“The only question is why you’re bringing this all to me?” Isabela asked. “I’ve half a mind to call you a very dirty guardsman indeed. Spilling the internal affairs of the Kirkwall Guard to some common criminal~”

“Common criminal?” Donnic smiled. “Should I take that as a confession of guilt?”

“Why don’t you guess at the crimes I’ve committed, and I can tell you if you’re correct?”

“Breaking and entering into the Guard barracks?”

Isabela clicked her tongue and tisked softly. “You think you’ll be able to pin me down on that charge? You won’t be able to get very far without the Guard Captain corroborating your claims, I don’t think.”

“You humanise her in a way,” Donnic said far too seriously.

Isabela frowned. Her coffee had grown lukewarm, and she drained the rest of it.

“That’s why I’m telling you this,” Donnic continued. “I’m sure that other members of the Guard would disagree, given you’re foreign yourself. And a criminal. It’s hardly a secret you’ve worked as a smuggler. But, to me, you humanise her… She’s a strict boss. She demands a lot, requires you follow the rules to the dot, and you have to work hard to earn your keep. It seems almost inhuman – the standards she holds herself and everyone else to. But for you she’ll make exceptions, play coy, play favourites.”

Isabela felt her eyes flutter with something like grief. “I… wouldn’t count on that,” she heard herself say softly. She thought again about how this man had once made Aveline give up. Isabela wasn’t that kind of person for her.

“I disagree,” Donnic said. “I think you can get her to budge… I’m just telling you how it seems to me.”

==

This had been a half a year ago. And Isabela had been annoyed with Aveline even before Aveline gave her the deed.

It was intrusive – the way Aveline walked into the Hanged Man in full suit armour and beelined for Isabela like unfinished business. Isabela supposed nobody who knew their arse from their tits in this city could have avoided knowing that “Pirate Wench” and Guard “Captain” were both part of Hawke’s little gang. But it sent the wrong message to openly collude in the Hanged Man in front of ratty criminals and drunks – like Aveline owned her and Isabela was just her little snitch. That Aveline risked her _own_ reputation to do so wasn’t really enough to make that better.

Isabela had to hold back from rolling in her eyes. Even the Rose would have been a better locale for this, not to mention conveniently filled with beds and a delightful selection of toys. Why couldn’t Aveline ever come find her there?

Aveline slammed the papers on the bar in front of Isabela and pointedly ignored Corff when he asked for her order.

“Four hundred sovereigns,” Aveline said.

“Quite a sum, Big Girl,” Isabela whistled, as she spread the papers across the bar with a little running motion of her fingers. “But I’ve told you before I’m not up for sale.”

“That wasn’t an offer.” Aveline frowned. “You’ve made it abundantly clear nobody should have to pay for your services.”

Isabela hummed indistinctly, which wasn’t much of a response. But truthfully she was no longer listening, because she was reading the title document for the Sea Canary – Castillon’s tragically named but marvellously swift ship.

“I thought the ship had been confiscated,” Isabela said mildly. “Evidence in your investigation on human trafficking.”

“It was,” Aveline agreed. “And then when the investigation closed, the Keep put it up for auction. It sold for four hundred sovereigns, for which you _will_ be responsible and pay.”

Isabela was quiet for a moment, and then flagged Corff down and ordered a glass of the smoothest rum he had. She passed it over to Aveline – performative gratitude. “So was it actually put up at auction? Did Lady Man Hands raise up a spanking paddle in the middle of the Hightown auction house and send good men running in fear? Or was that just the easiest way to sneak it onto the books in post?”

Aveline had to take off her gauntlet to accept the glass of rum. “Shut up, whore.”

By all means Isabela should have been grateful. She was, of course. But there was something else nagging and irritating her that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. And she found herself still irritable several days later when she and Aveline went to tour the Canary.

Oh, it looked sleek and clean on the outside, with a nice polished brown hull. But Isabela had taken issue with the rails, the figurehead, and the position of the deckhouse, even before they entered and got a good look at the décor.

“This is absolutely atrocious,” Isabela announced, as she pulled the runner off the dresser.

“Do you think he knew that canary and mustard yellow weren’t the same?” Aveline shrugged. “Perhaps he was colour blind.” She made this sound more the subject of idle curiosity, instead of a grave insult to the ship.

There was a set of benches nailed directly against the wall, and the mustard coloured satin that cushioned the seats was tacked directly to them. Isabela ripped them apart and sent wisps of cotton and down flying through the air. “This isn’t fit to be seen! I’ll have to redo the entire interior! I thought I’d just get to hiring a crew first, but this takes priority.”

“Be practical,” Aveline scolded. “A ship’s a ship, a bench is a bench, and coverlets and sheets and tea cosies work just as well if they’re one colour or the next. And it doesn’t look that bad, does it?”

“You only think that because you have no sense of taste or propriety to speak of,” Isabela said. “I told you and Hawke that one doesn’t just kill a man and take his ship, but that didn’t stop you from being a brute and doing it anyhow.”

“I didn’t steal the ship,” Aveline told Isabela. “I bought it. Or, rather, you bought it. You still owe the Keep four hundred sovereigns.”

Isabela knew that they both knew that four hundred sovereigns for a ship of this size and make was, quite frankly, a steal. And if Aveline had actually put it up for auction it would have fetched at least triple the amount. And the only reason any of this could have happened in the first place was because Aveline, the Guard, and the Keep, each by extension, had stolen the ship off Castillon’s still warm corpse in the way only self-righteous political bureaucracy could. And then passed it illicitly off to Isabela, also in the way only self-righteous political bureaucracy could.

And saying any of this would quite literally amount to Isabela shooting herself in the foot, so instead she just pouted. “You know, if you were going to give me a ship, you could have at least given me one I wanted.”

“I didn’t _give_ the ship to you, either,” Aveline said tightly. She was sounding more than a little irritable herself. “And this is _exactly_ the ship you wanted, Isabela. It’s the ship you wanted so badly, you were willing to corroborate with slavers to get it.”

 _Did she want it that badly?_ Isabela supposed it was true, but there was something truer underneath. She’d wanted the ship, yes. But more than that she’d wanted to look Castillon in the eye and see his pride in her, and his own humility. She wanted to hear him say she’d beaten him at his own game. And she would have needed him alive for that. Even if she knew, logically, she was safer with him dead.

“It’s absolutely dreadful,” Isabela shook her head at the portrait hanging on the wall –Castillon’s own visage smiling down at them. She knocked it down off the wall. “If it’s going to be like this, then forget it. Maybe I’ll flip it and buy another ship with the coin.”

Isabela had seen the Canary sail. It was the fastest ship on the sea, and Isabela knew she would never part with it.

Aveline seemed to know this too. She rolled her eyes and adjusted her coat as she strolled the captain’s quarters. It had been a cold and windy winter along the Kirkwall docks, and she’d forgone her typical set of armour. “Well, you have your ship. And once you’re done throwing your temper tantrum and hiring your crew, there won’t be anything stopping you from taking off to wherever you’d like.”

Isabela ripped another tapestry from the wall, and snuck closer to Aveline in a way she hoped wasn’t too obvious. “And what would you do without me as a constant headache in the Rose?” She was glad when her voice came out coy and mocking instead of anything else.

“Someone would rush to fill the hole,” Aveline said dismissively. “You know, like you never left.”

Isabela rushed to swipe Aveline’s feet out from under her and tossed her to the cabin’s bed.

Guardswoman collapsed on stupid mustard satin, and Isabela scrambled atop to pin her wrists. “I don’t think anyone’s going to fill your hole quite like I do, Big Girl.” She winked.

Aveline let out a low growl, like a cornered animal, and they wrestled for a while, just for fun. Tugging at one another, laughing and snarling in turn, grabbing clothes and wrists and flailing limbs and trying to flip the other over onto the sheets. Until Aveline let Isabela come out on top and let Isabela press a handful of fingers into her.

And when Isabela wound Aveline’s ponytail in her fist and scooted herself up to straddle Aveline’s face, it felt a little more like this was another thing Aveline was doing for her, instead of something that could be construed as Isabela paying her back for the ship.

It was good, and it made Isabela forget about being irritable for a few days at least. But a few days was only a small thing, and once it was done Isabela still hadn’t gotten the answers she wanted, or even been able to pose the question.

==

It was different, threading fingers through bristly fuzz.

Isabela sat with her back against the headboard, with Aveline’s head in her lap, and scratched her fingernails against the other woman’s scalp. When Aveline’s hair was longer, Isabela had at times tied it in half a dozen uneven braids. She remembered what a victory it had been, when Aveline had shown up for cards at the Hanged Man with a couple still in from the night before.

Isabela decided she didn’t mind the short hair much, even if she couldn’t braid it. She picked through Aveline’s scalp for flecks of dandruff and dried blood and flicked them aside.

“You know, I almost shaved my head once,” Isabela said.

“I remember.” Aveline groaned and turned her face down into Isabela’s thigh. “You whined about it for weeks.” She kissed Isabela’s stretch marks apologetically. “Tell me the story again.”

The story was this. There had been a terrible outbreak of lice in Lowtown, spread through the beds in the Hanged Man like wildfire. And Isabela had not been fortunate enough to evade their infestation. Itching for days and days, in spite of the unusually frequent string of baths Isabela had endeavoured to take. And then Varric showed up with his hair sheered and a big grin on his face and recommended she talk to their favourite healer.

She’d put it off for a few days more, and when she’d finally made the trip into Darktown, Anders had said exactly what she thought he would:

 _You should shave it off. It’ll be easier to treat that way._

Isabela had protested. _Spoken like somebody who hasn’t looked in a mirror in years. Please, Anders. You don’t understand. I have a reputation. Do you know how long it took for me to grow my hair out this long? I can’t just shave it all off!_

I _don’t understand?!_ Anders had bristled. _Do_ you _understand how thick your hair is?! The lice have burrowed down into every corner of it._ _You won’t be able to get rid of them._

But she had pleaded and raged and whined and teased and begged, and in the end she could count on Anders to be a foolish bleeding heart.

_Fine! Fine! You’ll have to come back tomorrow though. I have too many patients today as it is. Blighted waste of my time!_

He didn’t stop complaining, but he welcomed her into the clinic the next day with a washbin and a set of bedrolls arranged so she could sit with her back reclined. He dipped her scalp back into the water and, with large fingers, picked gently through her hair. Applying spirit magic and pesticides in alternating patterns to hurt the bugs but not her.

In the end, she’d fallen asleep in her seat, and he’d stayed awake and worked diligently for her even then – killing the lice and removing their eggs and washing and oiling her hair so it glowed a healthy sheen.

Isabela didn’t think anyone but Anders would have done that for her. And yet it was something Anders would have done for anyone.

She did not want to tell Aveline that story.

“How is Anders?” Isabela asked instead.

Aveline groaned and shifted again as she turned in Isabela’s lap. The key on the tweed at her wrist had nothing to jangle against, and it rattled silently against the air.

“I don’t really understand,” Aveline said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Isabela asked. “You have seen him, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have. I just mean- I don’t understand how he’s doing,” Aveline shrugged.

“How can you not know how he’s doing?” Isabela said, more hotly than she expected. She raked a hand through Aveline’s hair and tried to pull at it in a way that could be taken as teasing, nevermind that there was nothing to grip.

“I just don’t,” Aveline said. “He won’t speak to me. Not a word. No matter what I say to him. And he won’t eat. At first I brought him food spiked with magebane, and he didn’t eat that. And then I brought food that wasn’t spiked, and he wouldn’t eat that either. And even though he’s not drugged, he won’t use his magic.” Aveline shook her head. “I just don’t understand him at all. I’m not even sure there is anything to understand other than the demon.”

“You’re not feeding him?!” Isabela demanded. “You can’t just let him starve himself to death!”

Aveline snorted. “Come off it. You know as well as I do that Anders isn’t mortal and doesn’t need to eat to stay alive.”

That was true enough but- “You’re torturing the man!” Isabela accused.

“He’s torturing himself!” Aveline protested.

Isabela wasn’t sure what she was so unhappy about. Anders was an expert at making his own bed and then insisting he lie in it.

“I understand you’re upset with me about it,” Aveline sat up and looked at her directly. “But someone should hold Anders accountable for his actions, whether he did what he did for the greater good or no. And it’s my job to do that.”

“I’m not upset,” Isabela lied. “I just… need a drink.” She bolted up on her feet, gathered her clothes, and exited the bedroom.

As Isabela pulled on her boots she stumbled into the cabinet in the dining room. It was full of useless knickknacks that rattled at the slightest provocation, and Isabela hated that about Aveline’s house. Like you could make Kirkwall cute if you surrounded yourself with enough porcelain strawberries and porcelain birds. Or maybe like you could make a place home if you tied yourself to enough objects.

Or maybe Isabela was just in a really bad mood.

She stole a sack of blueberry muffins from the breadbox on the way out the door, and imagined Aveline getting up in the morning, looking for breakfast, and being annoyed Isabela for the theft. Which was a lot more satisfying than thinking about Aveline making them simply because she knew Isabela liked them.

 _Bitch_ , Isabela though, as she stuffed a muffin in her mouth and ran into the cold and down the steps to Lowtown.

She had to stab eight people on the way back, which was something of a record for a day she wasn’t gang hunting with Hawke. And the further she descended down the city steps the more it felt like the rankness and destitution of Darktown was beginning to rise up the rest of the city like high tide. Charred doors, broken windows, and people too moody and desperate and angry to have a good time in spite of it. But then she reached her destination, a spot nearly as bright as the red lanterns at the Rose. _Ah, the dirty, glorious chaos of the Hanged Man was exactly the thing to cheer her up._

Only it really wasn’t doing much of the sort. The Hanged Man had really gone to hell, so far as Isabela could tell.

Varric was still renting the room upstairs, she knew. But Isabela also knew certain things were just a matter of time, especially when he’d been staying overnight at the Keep for days at a time. And all the class and character of the tavern seemed to have vanished in his absence: The ale Corff served her was watered down – a portent of the food shortages to come. In the ensuing half hour, Isabela had been hit on by two men she wouldn’t have touched with the bendy side of a six foot pole. And by the end of it, she was so jumpy she nearly stabbed Maraas when he came up and clasped her on the shoulder.

“Oh, oops, sorry about that,” Isabela said. She stowed away her dagger and stuffed the last half of the last muffin in her mouth, chasing it down with watery ale.

“You’re back.” Maraas crossed his arms and frowned.

“Where am I back from?” Isabela challenged. “It’s not as if I’ve gone anywhere.”

“Hightown,” Maraas answered. “You’ve been missing for several days.”

“What? No, I haven’t,” Isabela laughed.

Maraas gave her a look.

Okay, so maybe she had divvied up her time between here and Aveline’s just a _little_ bit unevenly-

“The crew is waiting. So is the cargo,” Maraas pointed out. “Our job is lined up. It’s you we are all waiting on.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Isabela reached up to pat him lightly on the shoulder. “Keep up the good work.”

“They’re good able-bodied men. And smart enough to know this is no place to stay. If you do not use them, they will find other work. They won’t wait for you,” Maraas warned. “We’ve already lost our navigator.”

“We have?” Isabela felt a little shocked in spite of herself. “Bastard,” she murmured.

“It’s nothing we can’t come back from. Not so far,” Maraas made clear.

Isabela crossed her right foot over her left, lined them up flat against the floor, and leaned over the bar.

“I won’t wait for you either,” Maraas said. “Finish your business in Hightown and, remember, I don’t work for politicians or causes.”

“No causes,” Isabela agreed. “I just- I need-” She held back a groan. “Just a few days. A little more time to see what’s going to happen. You can keep everyone together for me for that long, can’t you?”

She thought she was going to have to plead for more time. Isabela was quite good at it, after so much practice pleading Castillon’s agents for just a little more time to find the relic, and a little more after that. She’d drug it out for almost four years.

Maraas, thankfully, was a good subordinate and did not require that of her.

“A few days,” he agreed. “Then we go.”

==

It occurred to Isabela that she was now as old as her mother had ever been to her. Madam Hari could not have been more than twenty when she bore Isabela, and Isabela had been sixteen when her mother sold her to Luis.

Isabela was now on the right side of thirty-eight.

Isabela wasn’t sure when she started to understand why her mother had joined the Qun. She hadn’t understood it when she was sixteen, clearly, because she remembered the screaming fights and silent crying because she didn’t know when or why her mother had tired of her and the life they had shared. But Isabela thought back on her mother now, and thought of who she’d become, and saw it with something like clarity.

There was the general sense of her mother when she looked in the mirror, of course. Pockmarks and fat settled on her skin in the same places, and her lips curled into the same sly grin. But her hair was thicker and wavier than her mother’s had been, and Isabela was fuller of figure, and stronger. The resemblance was marked, but not overpowering. And Madam Hari’s then perennial worries of fading beauty were not the ones that haunted Isabela.

Youth and beauty did not mean as much as confidence, and Isabela had cultivated a reputation for being a good fun time without much propensity for lingering drama, so she never had trouble finding a fling at the Hanged Man. She knew her own lack of propensity towards honest work, and planned to kill and steal well into old age. The sea called her as much as ever, and she would never, ever, find comfort in the rigid iron of the Qun.

But it was nice having something to come back to when Isabela was done with her daily dose of rutting and thieving and running – a place she belonged. It was nice when Merrill dropped by to deliver conversation and burnt scones. It was nice to lie back on the chaise lounge in Fenris’s dismal manor and together drink and laugh and throw an old magister’s possessions against the wall. It was nice to break into the Keep and sit on Aveline’s lap to distract her from paperwork. And it was nice when they all met for games of Wicked Grace at Varric’s. It was being part of something larger than yourself, and it was having people you could rely on to side with you against the rest of the world. And, in a way, it was stability.

She understood now, why her mother had wanted that.

It was a few days later after a few days later with more cajoling Maraas into trying to keep her crew together in the meantime, and Isabela woke from where she’d fallen asleep in the chair at Aveline’s dining table.

It took her a moment to recognise the sound of the door, the clank of multiple sets of plate armour. Isabela wiped the drool that trailed down the side of her face and went to peek around the archway into the front room. She dropped the pretence quickly, when she saw Guardsman Donnic and Sergeant Brennan manoeuvre sideways through the front door, dragging mud over the welcome mat. They had Aveline slung between them. She was missing her plate armour, and had a bloody bruise across her forehead and deep gash cut into her abdomen.

“Big Girl,” Isabela warned, like Aveline owed it to her to be less dramatic. She tried not to panic when Aveline didn’t respond.

Sergeant Brennan acknowledged her with a brief glance, before unhooking Aveline from her shoulder. She addressed Donnic as she leaned Aveline’s extra weight into him. “I’m heading back to the Keep to call a meeting and finish the reports. You’ll handle debriefing here.”

“Of course, Bre,” Donnic agreed, although the Sergeant had already turned on her heel and shut the door behind her.

“C’mon. You’ve had worse than this, Big Girl,” Isabela said, as she hurried to Aveline’s empty side.

Aveline looked over at her groggily. She was conscious at least.

“You haven’t called a healer?” Isabela demanded. And then immediately regretted it.

 _Call a healer from where? The Circle? Maybe if Aveline hadn’t locked Anders up then they could have called him, but-_ Isabela cursed.

Donnic was kind enough to acknowledge the mistake with nothing more than an uncomfortable smile. “Let’s lie her down.”

They struggled into the bedroom, Isabela felt quite useless as Donnic was better suited to carrying someone of Aveline’s size, and it was not better when he seemed to realise this. “Do you have any poultices or bandages? It might be a good time to get them?” he asked, clearly setting her to a task elsewhere as he rotated Aveline down into bed.

“Oh, erm, of course,” Isabela agreed. She went for the cupboard where Aveline kept her first aid materials. She collected the poultices and bandages and poured a generous vial from their dwindling stock of Lady Elegant’s potions.

Donnic was standing at the bedside, with his eyes trained carefully at nothing, looking very professional with stiff shoulders and his arms behind his back. Isabela had half a mind to rib him for it – this wasn’t much like how he might have imagined his Captain moaning and groaning in bed, was it? But she found, quite oddly, that she appreciated his discretion. He made himself easy to ignore, as Isabela cradled Aveline’s head and poured a sip of the potion down her throat.

“Idiot carrot head guardswoman,” she said softly, as she capped the rest of the vial and began to lay out the herbs and bandages. “Serves you right if you’re loopy on elfroot the rest of today and the next.”

“It looks like you have things handled here,” Donnic offered. “I should head back to the Keep.”

“Wait a moment,” Isabela protested. “You still haven’t told me what happened.” She followed him out of the bedroom. They walked past the dining table and all the knickknacks in Aveline’s cabinet rattled with every step.

“She was ambushed,” Donnic turned to face her, now that they were safely distanced from Aveline’s bedside. “Targeted for political assassination. The men who did it – rogue members of the guard and their sellswords – are dead. We think she’ll be safe here for the rest of the night. But there must be several noble families funding this. It won’t be the last of them or their sympathisers.” He sighed. “Sergeant Brennan only knew because Lieutenant Harley overheard them planning and ratted. And now she’s tendered her resignation. She’s afraid she’ll be targeted next.”

“So Aveline’s own Guard did this to her,” Isabela frowned.

Donnic raised an eyebrow. “Talk to her,” he said. “See what you can do.” And he exited the house and left Isabela behind.

 _Stupid_ , Isabela thought, as she returned to the bedroom. She spread poultice over the bruise on Aveline’s face and the open wound at her abdomen. She rolled bandages and fluffed pillows and tucked blankets. Like some kind of nurse. And Isabela hated how Donnic talked to her the way army officers reported in with crippled soldiers. _Be kind. Be nurturing. See if you can talk some sense into her. Get her to stay in bed._ As if Isabela was her little wife, or _little beauty._

This was not Isabela’s forte. This was what they had Anders around for. And Hawke – to argue Aveline around on things. And Merrill and Varric to lighten everyone’s mood. And-

Aveline sighed deeply, coming further into wakefulness as Isabela gave her another sip from the vial of health potion. “Well, this has certainly been a day.”

Isabela swallowed hard. Aveline had been hurt and betrayed and was lightheaded from the elfroot and bloodloss and Isabela didn’t think she’d get a better chance. “Aveline… Big Girl…” she said, as softly as she could. “You can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” Aveline said. And the question seemed genuine, like she didn’t know what Isabela was talking about.

“ _This_ ,” Isabela waved her hands over Aveline’s prostrated, bedridden form. “Look, you had a good run, longer than any of your naysayers thought you would. But times have changed and you need to _go._ Leave the Guard. Leave Kirkwall. The others are already gone for a reason. You can’t make this the hill you’ll die on, Big Girl.”

Now Aveline got it. “I can’t,” she protested.

Isabela sighed. “Big Girl, you-”

“Isabela,” Aveline interrupted. “No.”

“Yes!” Isabela insisted. “You talked about resigning in the aftermath of Jevan’s rally! What changed?!”

Aveline tried to sit up in bed, winced at the pain, and lowered herself back down. Not that she let that stop her. “What changed is the blighted Chantry got blasted to pieces, the Templar Order collapsed, and the Guard is the only order left in the City! I can’t just abandon them now!”

“Yes, you can!” Isabela insisted. “Your own men attacked you!”

“We can’t all be pirate whores who run away from our responsibilities.”

“Why not?!” Isabela challenged. “Have you tried it?!”

Aveline sighed and sunk deeper into her pillow.

Isabela ran a hand through her hair and yanked in frustration. “You are going to get yourself _killed_!” she groaned. “This is _suicide_!”

“What was it you said,” Aveline chuckled, “about diving into that storm? _Nothing ventured, nothing gained_?”

“There’s nothing to be gained here,” Isabela hissed. “Even if you manage to pull the Keep up by the bootstraps, what do you think is going to happen when Sebastian gets here with his army?! And when the Divine sends her March?!”

“It’s alright,” Aveline placated. “I just have to hold out until Starkhaven comes. We have Anders, and so long as we do we can negotiate with them. Turn him over for trial. Once we do, the men will see we can hold together.”

“You can’t _possibly_ think that’s a solution.”

Aveline sighed. “I know you-”

Isabela cut her off entirely. “What?! You’ll hand Anders over for trial? Scapegoating? Public execution? And then I’m sure the entire army will pack up and head home to Starkhaven?! Like they’ll be satisfied being dragged out of bed and marched over the Vimmarks for one apostate’s head?!”

“I know you’re upset,” Aveline said curtly. “But he needs to face justice for his crime.”

“This isn’t about _justice_!” Isabela said. “This is _conquest_!”

“It’s my job to protect-!” Aveline was saying.

“-yourself?!” Isabela finished for her. “How long before you arrest me and hand me over so you can keep your cushy little position as _Captain of the Guard_?!” Isabela shouted. “I’m a criminal! It’s your _job_! How long before you arrest me too?!”

Oh… Well… That was embarrassing. Isabela felt herself clam up and her face grow hot. She was suddenly keenly aware she was screaming at a bedridden invalid.

“That’s not fair,” Aveline protested. She let out a fond sigh. “Isabela… I would never-”

Isabela bolted up from where she was sitting at the bedside and stormed out into the dining room. She paced, back and forth around the table, skin crawling and ready to scream. A porcelain seagull dropped from atop one of Aveline’s cabinets, and Isabela bent down to grab it and threw it so it shattered against the wall.

She walked more, trying to calm herself down.

There was a drawer of keys inside the desk in Hawke’s study, bits of scrap metal that Hawke had picked up here and there along with the torn trousers and sea glass. They had no pair and no purpose – no locks to match them. But, as if to validate seven years of Hawke’s debilitating hoarding habit, Isabela had suddenly found herself a use for one. So she’d broken into the Amell Estate a few days before, carefully avoiding the notice of Charade and Gamlen and Orana, and dug through the drawer for something she could use.

Now in Aveline’s dining room, she pulled the key out of her bodice. She tucked it under the bangles at her wrist and moved to wrap her scarf over it.

Aveline was still awake, waiting for her, when Isabela came back into the bedroom.

“I’m sorry,” she said, before Aveline could say anything.

Aveline sighed. “Isabela…”

Isabela grabbed her by the legs, dragged her a bit further down the mattress, scrambled quickly atop the bed. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “You’re right, it wasn’t fair of me… Here, let me make it up to you.”

“Isabela,” Aveline protested weakly, but Isabela silenced it quickly with a kiss.

She tried to be soft, gentle. Aveline was hurt after all. She straddled Aveline’s left thigh with a careful movement of her hips, and scooted slowly up it so she was kneeing Aveline’s groin. But Aveline did hiss a little in pain as Isabela took her by the wrists and slowly eased Aveline’s arms up to pin them against the mattress over her head. It didn’t seem to be a bad pain though, given how ardently Aveline was returning her open mouthed kisses.

And a little pain wasn’t bad anyhow, Isabela thought. In fact, it might even have helped a bit with the distraction. It wasn’t hard at all to perform the sleight of hand that swapped out the key tied to Aveline’s wrist with the look-alike from Hawke’s stash.

==

“You know, you really have a lot of nerve,” Isabela pressed open the hard metal door to the cell.

Anders looked up at her, pale and gaunt still with enough presence of mind to glare petulantly. There was a flicker of blue across his face, and then only what the torchlight down the hall illuminated.

“Nothing but nerve,” Isabela said. She took the pack off her back and threw it at him so it hit him in the face. “Get up.”

Anders did not get up. He didn’t even say anything. The most he did was paw idly at the pack, letting it settle in his lap.

Isabela sighed and stepped quickly forward. “Let’s try again. When I say, ‘Get up,’ you say, ‘Yes, Captain Isabela,’ and do as I’ve told you.” She didn’t really expect anything like deference from Anders, but he didn’t exactly fight her when she reached down for his arm and hauled him and the pack up. “It reeks here. We’re leaving.”

Anders seemed to hesitate, but Isabela wasn’t having it. She took him by the arm and yanked him forward after her. She turned them down deeper into the Keep dungeons. Isabela knew the layout of the Keep by heart. And she knew the secret passage in the dungeons where the Keep bled into the undercity into the underground into the Deep Roads, and then curled up to the surface in the mountains near Sundermount.

“I’m showing you to the East Road,” she told Anders. “Not that you need me to,” she huffed. “They’ve gutted the Keep. Two night guards patrolling the entire thing. It’s practically a joke. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have broken out at any time.”

Anders followed this command and didn’t tell her much of anything.

Isabela raised an arm to block his path, and then crouched down in the corridor. There were some trap tiles, now that they were approaching the false wall that would lead them out of the Keep’s boundaries. She carefully disarmed the plates, and checked the walls for anything that might sound an alarm.

“You could have torn apart that cell door and anything else standing in your way, if you wanted to break out,” Isabela accused. “But no. You wanted someone to come get you, because you’re determined to drag everyone else down with you. Don’t think I don’t have you figured out, Anders. I don’t plan to let you get away with it anymore,” she announced.

She led them through the false door and into the crypts, barely better than the Bone Pit. It felt like this whole city was just the fragile scaffolding sitting atop a giant gaping maw, eager to devour the blood of its citizens.

And there were Shambling Skeletons. Of course there were Shambling Skeletons. Not too impressive an enemy – no match for Isabela’s speed. But one of them managed to get close enough to swipe the tip of their greatsword across Isabela’s cheek in a shallow cut. Isabela quickly jumped back, and charged around the back of the Skeleton from behind.

And of course Anders just stood back as she slashed at the vile things and stomped their bones to dust.

Isabela huffed moodily, as she led them the rest of the way through the crypts. And it was silent save for their footsteps and the sound of dripping groundwater, piling onto stalagmites and into underground pools as they made their way into the warm runelight into the shallow thaigs of the Deep Roads.

Isabela walked an hour or so until she’d reminded herself that, no matter how much Anders hated the Deep Roads, she couldn’t make this or anything okay for him. And she had to get back to Kirkwall besides. So when they turned up a familiar passage, she swivelled to face Anders.

He’d finally hiked the pack she’d given him up onto his shoulder. It was a good sign, Isabela thought.

“This is it,” she said. “It’s a straight shot up to the surface at Sundermount from here. I’m cutting you loose. You and that dodgy spirit of yours can sink or swim on your own now.”

And Isabela had heard stories about Anders’s first escape from Kinloch. She was pretty sure he was a swimmer.

Anders hesitated though, because of course he couldn’t make anything easy. He made a low sound, like the purr of a feral cat. And it took Isabela a moment to realise he was clearing his throat.

“Why did you rescue me?” Anders asked, in a voice hoarse from disuse.

 _What could he possibly want by asking me_ that _?_ Isabela wondered. Was it her approval? Or forgiveness? A reason to live? Tough luck. Isabela didn’t have those kinds of answers for him.

She could have told him that she’d rescued him because he was one of theirs – one of Hawke and company. But Hawke wasn’t around anymore, and neither were any of the others. And the truth was Isabela had misunderstood something a long time ago, before they’d even met in Kirkwall. The truth was she didn’t have many people left from back then, and the ones she did she secretly thought of as old friends. And Anders was one of the oldest – the vain apostate boy at the Pearl that she couldn’t save, not from the templars, not from Justice, not from himself.

Even if she didn’t always like him, even if he had a morbid obsession with pulling out the rug from under everyone and revealing how shaky the ground they’d been standing on was, Isabela still felt something for him she didn’t feel for just anybody.

She reached for his grubby hand and pressed its backside against her cheek.

“Goodbye,” she said. And it occurred to her that every time she’d said goodbye to Zevran she had wondered just like this if it would be the last she ever saw of him.

She wished she had said goodbye to Hawke and Fenris and Merrill like that. Not as members of a fracturing alliance. But like a friend should have.

Anders seemed to accept it as an answer, and he turned his hand to wipe the tear out of her eye and heal the cut the Skeletons left on her face. And, really, he was precious like that, and Isabela knew it was just what he would have done for anyone.

==

Donnic got it right away to his credit.

Isabela had taken a long nap at the Hanged Man, and it was late in the afternoon by the time she’d headed up to the Keep. The plaza at Viscount’s Way was still a mess, with rubble knocked into ditches and street corners and atop awnings, and the Keep was still busy with petitioners and mobs and frightened nobles. But as Isabela slipped through the crowd and skipped into the Guard barracks, she found it abnormally quiet, if in a state of disarray. The shift roster had not been simply torn to pieces, but the entire post torn down. Guardsman Donnic was attempting to gather the splinters.

“You know,” he told her when he saw her, “when I said ‘See what you can do,’ I didn’t mean you should spirit away an influential political prisoner.”

“I wouldn’t have the first idea what you’re talking about,” Isabela said breezily. “But, from the sound of it, trying to mean anything was your first mistake, wasn’t it?”

Donnic sighed and fussed with the broom. Isabela watched him toil away.

“You have a mother, don’t you, Donny?” Isabela asked.

“Most people do.”

“Not everyone,” Isabela said. “But Big Girl mentioned her once. Something about a few goats and a sheaf of wheat… I bet you can’t say how long it’s been since your mother last went on vacation. You should take her somewhere nice.”

Donnic didn’t have much to say to this bright idea.

“I’ll just be in the office then,” Isabela offered, conciliatory.

The door creaked ajar when she knocked on it. And, though it hadn’t been even two days since Aveline was attacked, of course she was back at work – pale faced, the bruise on her face still purpling, and wearing full plate armour that had to be too heavy.

“Man-chin? Marigold? Tragic, glorious Ser Aveline?” Isabela asked in quick succession. She supposed she was here to face the music.

“Isabela,” Aveline scowled as she scribbled something on the documents ahead of her. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Oh, I think you should make time for it,” Isabela insisted. She clicked the door shut behind her and strode into the centre of the room.

It turned out Aveline didn’t need much persuading. “They took him!” She pounded her fist against the desk. “They just up and took him! They sold the whole city out just to sabotage me!”

Isabela’s nose scrunched. “They?” This was not quite what she’d come in here expecting.

“The rogue guardsmen!” Aveline said. “Or I suppose it could have been agents from Starkhaven, Seekers, the Coterie, other apostates from the Mage Underground. It didn’t look like he broke himself out.”

Isabela was sure she looked as dumbstruck as she felt.

“Anders,” Aveline clarified. “We’re talking about Anders.”

“I know we’re talking about Anders!” Isabela snapped.

“They took him,” Aveline repeated. “And I don’t have men to send into the Deep Roads after them.”

“Let me see if I have this right, Big Girl?” Isabela said. “You have a list of enemies a mile long, of them you trust the members of your own Guard not to have done this least of all, and I _still_ needed to go to this extreme?!”

Aveline leaned back in her seat. “You mean-?”

“ _I_ broke Anders out, you absolute madwoman!” Isabela couldn’t help but huff a laugh. “You’re absolutely insane!”

“Oh?!” Aveline stood. She frowned as she stood and stepped out from behind her desk. Jutted her chin. Crossed her arms across her chest. “I suppose I really must look the fool for thinking that you, of all people, wouldn’t betray me.”

“Betray?!” It wasn’t funny, but Isabela couldn’t stop laughing. “You can’t possibly have thought that I’d let you go through with this?!”

Isabela could see the way the abrasive sound grated against Aveline’s ears and, when Aveline stepped briskly forward, Isabela thought for a moment Aveline might hit her across the face or do something equally wretched.

Instead Aveline lightly brushed her gauntlet against Isabela’s bicep, and then pulled back. “I suppose I didn’t,” she admitted.

The giggle died on Isabela’s tongue. “Were you waiting for me to stop you?” she asked.

Aveline looked down at the floor. “I shouldn’t have put you in that position,” she admitted, in a clipped voice.

They stood for a moment, close but not touching. The centimetres between them felt like gulfs.

“Why are you here?” Aveline asked after a moment.

“Nobody’s really missing me at the Hanged Man.” Isabela smiled to herself. “Well, not until after dark at the very least,” she admitted.

“That’s not what I meant,” Aveline groaned. “I mean- Why are you _here_?” She gestured vaguely at the Keep. “Merrill and the others are gone. I figured you’d leave as soon as you knew Anders was safe. It’s why I thought it couldn’t have been you, when you walked into my office.”

_Oh, lords, Aveline wasn’t going to make her say it, was she? She couldn’t possibly-_

Isabela wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She reached up, and slipped her nails under Aveline’s headband and pulled it over her head. She wrapped its knots coyly around her fingers. “You really are the daftest woman, I know,” she smiled.

Aveline sighed and leaned her cheek atop Isabela’s head. “Isabela, I can’t just-”

“You can,” Isabela insisted. She reached for Aveline’s hands, and began to unbuckle her gauntlets. “You _have_ to. You don’t have a bargaining chip for Starkhaven without Anders.”

“I’m beginning to think you didn’t even do this for Anders,” Aveline huffed. “You just don’t like me having the authority to arrest you.”

Isabela grimaced. “So you weren’t so high on elfroot potion you forgot all about that?” She dropped Aveline’s gauntlets on the rug and reached under her arms to unhook her breastplate.

“You sabotaged me,” Aveline accused. “You’ve never liked me having this job.”

“Oooh, you caught me, officer~ Going to punish me?” Isabela wiggled her hips. “That’s right. I’ve never liked it, but I also didn’t intervene until it conspired to get you killed.”

Aveline sighed. “Some people would say I deserve to die defending this place. As Guard Captain. I have a responsibility to this city, Isabela.”

“Forget about that,” Isabela said, having removed Aveline’s breastplate and reaching up for her pauldrons. “Before any of it, you have a responsibility to _me_.”

Aveline cooperated as Isabela removed the last of her Guard Captain’s uniform and kicked it towards the desk. She looked different, in just her undershirt and bandages and red tartan. They felt soft, when Aveline leaned down to pull Isabela to her chest. “I have a responsibility to you, do I?”

Isabela laughed softly into her ear. “Why would you give me a ship if you didn’t intend to be on it?”

“For the last time, I didn’t _give_ you the ship,” Aveline said hotly. “And I just… didn’t want that to be what held you back.”

“Not _that_ that’s holding me back.” Isabela rubbed her hand up Aveline’s back. “Come on, Big Girl. Hawke and the others are gone. And I have a job and some cargo and a crew that’s sick of waiting… Come with me. I’ll even let you bring your stupid set of porcelain birds.”

Aveline sighed. “Isabela…” she sputtered one last feeble protest.

“Say you want to sail away with me.”

And then Aveline did what Isabela didn’t think she’d do for her. However you wanted to put it: she gave in, gave up, budged.

“I do.”

Isabela took her by the hand and, together, they left the Keep through the window.


End file.
